Chunky Roundup
Written byPosted on February 6, 2007
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- If you’re anything like me, you consider Jackie Collins’ words to be about as insightful and comprehensible to your life as those incomprehensible furniture instructions printed who knows where. Yet Ms. Collins seems to believe that she can help Victoria Beckham. Perhaps Ms. Collins is attempting to atone for past conversational setbacks. Or perhaps she’s alarmed that Tony Danza didn’t follow her advice to get his nipples pierced in order to ward off evil eidolons. Either way, I’m awaiting the inevitable novel fictionalizing Ms. Collins’ admonishments, Fool Me Spice, Shame on Me.
- It wouldn’t be a Tuesday without a Lethem story. (Hell, it would be Tuesday without a Collins story. But I’ve already blown that promise and you can send your disused prophylactics to me by mail in protest.) It appears that Boston musicians are creating an original song from the lyrics in Lethem’s upcoming novel, You Don’t Love Me Yet. The winning song will be unfurled at Lethem Central and it will be performed at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on March 27. Whether this will translate into a Clap Your Hands-style indie hit through the Internet or an unsettling choice at your karaoke bar of choice remains anyone’s guess.
- Cathy Young offers this disingenuous claim: “Respectable modern-day literature has no shortage of derivative works: What are Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead or John Updike’s Gertrude and Claudius but Hamlet fanfics?” I think not. There’s a fundamental difference between “writers” who labor over bad prose describing Kirk schtupping Spock and writers like Stoppard offering a witty and separately realized tale of two overlooked bumblers. In Hamlet, R&G were little more than minor characters with scant attributes. Plus, I don’t believe international copyright law applies to works published in 1599. Besides, it’s not as if Updike and Stoppard are going to other characters for the majority of their work. Updike and Stoppard have indelible characters like Rabbit Angstrom and Moon to fuel their respective imaginations. Fanfic writers, by contrast, often have no narrative ideas other than derivative stories involving characters they don’t own or have not created. Further, they are often inept with subject-verb agreement. I advise novice writers to toil at such infecundities at their own peril. What’s more, Ms. Young has also taken Lee Goldberg’s comments out of context. But then one would expect no less of a self-acknowledged fan fiction writer accustomed to absconding with characters she has neither the right nor the talent to tinker with. (And lest I be accused of attacking Ms. Young’s character, let’s let her fiction speak for itself. This story reveals such blunders as “Xena’s voice spilled into his reverie.” You mean, Xena’s voice is liquid as opposed to aural? Who knew? Or how about: “Back in his leather pants, Ares came out into the main room of the house.” The prepositional phrase is unnecessary. We’re already in the goddam house. The words “out into” are oxymoronic. And what in the hell does that dreadful clause about the leather pants have to do with the sentence’s purpose? I could examine this dreadful prose at length, but I’d rather spend a weekend hiring someone to saw my limbs off.)
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
Blunders, Ed? Or wonders
Call the police! Fanfic writers are stealing copyrighted work and perpetrating bad grammar and unnecessary prepositional phrases! Sheesh–what a prig.
Speaking of blunders, your post “reveals such blunders as”:
1. Awkward repititions:
“…an unsettling choice at your karaoke bar of choice”
2. Nonsense usages:
“comprehensible to your life”
3. Nonparallel structures:
” ‘writers’ who labor over bad prose describing Kirk schtupping Spock and writers like Stoppard offering [try "who offer"] a witty and separately realized tale of two overlooked bumblers”
4. Mangled idioms:
“I advise novice writers to toil at such infecundities at their own peril.” [You advise them to do what precisely?]
Hey Darby: Has it ever occurred to you that some of my phrasings were INTENTIONALLY BAD? But never mind this. Your remarks here don’t even address the argument. Even for a Pynchonite who doesn’t even have the cojones to reveal his real name (could you, in fact, be Ms. Young herself!), you’re doing a pisspoor job in defending fanfic’s honor. You’re going to have to do better than straw man arguments, pipsqueak.
Dear Ed: the guy who composes under the altar ego “DrMabuse” complains about a letter-writer who “doesn’t even have the cojones to reveal his real name”? What? Also, upon consideration, if Ed Champion is the real name of a real person, well, perhaps Darby Suckling is the real name of a real person. Both names are uncommon. Also (and this is just nit-picking for the pure joy of the act), why do you refer to the letter writer as “he” if you suspect the letter-writer of being “Ms.Young”? Don’t say you think the letter-writer is male.
This is all just to say that “Darby Suckling”, whoever he or she is, definitely owns you in the comment numbered “3″, and it would be honest of you, and nice of you, to admit the fact. So touchy!
He/she/it doesn’t own me at all. He/she/it never addressed my argument. Offer an argument that fan fiction represents literature on the level and I’ll happily listen.
As to my “altar ego” and related topics, obviously you’ve never heard of irony. Long-time readers are aware that “Ed Champion” is a fabricated sobriquet and that these musings come from a 54 year old botanist named Doris Entwhistle, who I pay quite well.
Dear Ms Entwhistle:
DS implicitly addressed your argument by addressing the flaw in it, which was, namely, that listing the flaws inherent in fanfiction (”stealing copyrighted work and perpetrating bad grammar “) does not mean that fanfiction does not have literary value. Such value would be apparent in Chabon’s The Final Solution, which is both an acceptable Sherlock Holmes pastiche and a meditation on what life means as one approaches death.
I’ve presented an argument. I’m assuming you’re happily listening. Stop being so touchy, Doris.
Orlando: I’m not touchy. But now we’re arguing! (DS didn’t bring up these specific points, but I’m happy to volley.)
That wasn’t the whole of my argument, as clearly imputed with the Updike and Stoppard examples that Ms. Young herself uses. I don’t accept Updike, Stoppard and Chabon as fan fiction (like you apparently do), because there are deeper thematics and characterizations (often elaborations on other characters) that clearly go beyond the morass I qualify as “fan fiction” (see Young, Cathy above) and into the realm of LITERATURE! It is reasonable to reference culture in fiction, particularly when in the public domain, but my own view is that there must be a deeper grounding initiated by the author. It is despicable (and illegal) to juxtapose characters from television shows into lackluster narratives. It is laudable when one does something with it to create a grander meditation (such as Tom Carson’s GILLIGAN’S WAKE, which I don’t view as “fan fiction,” although by your terms certainly could be).